And this is how he started.

What was the worst thing you’ve ever done?

I won’t tell you that, but I’ll tell you the worst thing that ever happened to me… the most dreadful thing…

Precisely.

I’ve borrowed Peter’s words because they so perfectly express what I’m feeling. The worst thing I’ve ever done? I’ll leave that troubling question for a different book.

But the worst thing that ever happened to me? The most dreadful thing? I can tell you that with absolute certainty. Indeed, with terrible compulsion, I find myself driven to describe that ordeal. My effort isn’t voluntary. It comes in torturous rushes. Distraught, I remind myself of Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, in a frenzy stopping friends and strangers to tell of my woe, as if by describing it often enough, I can numb myself and blunt the words-and in so doing heal myself of the cause behind the words.

The effort’s impossible, I suspect. Certainly, it didn’t work for the Ancient Mariner. After killing a bird of good omen and enduring a consequent nightmarish sea voyage, he managed to return to shore.

Forthwith this frame of mine was wrenched

With a woful agony,

Which forced me to begin my tale;

And then it left me free.

Left him free? Well, apparently not, for Coleridge adds a marginal note that “ever and anon throughout his future life an agony constraineth him to travel from land to land.”

Since then, at an uncertain hour,

That agony returns:

And till my ghastly tale is told,

This heart within me burns.

I’m no more free than the Ancient Mariner. To be sure, I haven’t killed a bird of good omen, though I recently saw a metaphoric version of such a bird die-and three days later I saw a literal bird, very much alive, that seemed to be a reincarnation of the departed soul of the first. A cryptic reference? You bet. Necessarily so, and soon to be explained. A mystical experience; and along with terror, sorrow, agony, guilt, compassion, God, and redemption, it’s very much a part of my tale. For like the Ancient Mariner, my heart surely burns to tell you-once and for all, to be done with my tale, to exorcise my demons, to gain and preserve my faith.